The Tainted Killings
by Lavender Flame
Summary: The sixtieth Hunger Games was one of the bloodiest years Panem had ever seen.


**_The Tainted Killings_**

The arena for the sixtieth Hunger Games was gruesome. Red, everywhere, red, _crimson_. The sky, the dust that settled over the ground, so fine it never quite collected, reflecting sunlight in shades of gold and blood. The weapons in the Cornucopia were only too enticing for the strongest of tributes—small daggers weaved with poison that could cause full minutes of agony before death, swords so sharp they'd cut off limbs with almost no effort, hollow spiked balls to throw that gave off a high electric current. Seventeen tributes died in just over eight minutes. Eight minutes into the Games, there were only seven left to play—the final-eight interviews took place that very afternoon. Under a third of the children who had entered were still alive.

The four remaining Careers stayed at the Cornucopia the longest, while the girl from Six, the boy from Eight, and the boy from Nine each raced off alone, well-armed and well-fed.

The Careers started to hunt before sundown, going until after dawn. They found no one.

And the crowds, despite the buckets and buckets of blood that stained the golden Cornucopia, tribute plates, and ground around it... they were getting restless.

The Careers returned to their camp, set up on one of the wide plains. All four were exhausted from scouring the mountainous areas all night, and weren't up for a fight.

And so, of course, came the girl from Six.

The Careers didn't notice until the cannon of the girl from Two, and her piercing scream as the blade lodged in the back of her neck. Six jumped over her body and lunged for her district partner.

The tributes still left for One and Four fought back, if weary, and the battle raged for over forty minutes without a single other death.

And so came the mutts.

No one was quite sure what they were—flying, winged, black and red creatures that had claws, spit acid like rain and could carry a tribute off wrapped in their wings.

In fact, they almost got the girl from Four.

But she struggled, knowing no one was there to even _try _to help, and Panem only knew where she was being taken. The mutt's wings opened and _splat!_ She hit the ground and there was a sickening _crunch _as all her bones broke, fresh blood dripping from a gash along her shoulder. She laid helpless, unable to scream but once as tears made tracks in the dirt coating her face.

The boy from Two saw the only point of the battle. He ran, avoiding the acid raining down, swung a sword out and completely decapitated his fellow Career from One. The head rolled down a dune, nearly tripping Six. His cannon fired three seconds before the girl from Four's.

The girl from Six wasn't quite done with the pack yet.

The winged creatures flew off with what almost sounded like pained cries, the dirt settled, and the two tributes were left in eerie silence.

But not for long.

"You!" Six shrieked. "_You_! You _traitor—_!" She jumped forwards, caught Two by the shoulders, and pinned him to the ground as he squirmed. Six hovered over him, grinning madly, eyes glinting. She leant forwards a bit and hissed, "_I'm going to kill you_. Just like you killed _them_."

"W-Wha—?"

"Oh, shush. Nothing's going to help you."

Six reached back and pulled what could've been a pencil out of her bag. But instead, it was sharpened to an extreme point, completely made of fine silver. Two swallowed.

"You remember, don't you?" she snarled. "Remember what you said at the interview?" She traced the very tip of the weapon down the side of his face. "'I don't wanna kill anyone. I just wanna go home.'" She dug the blade in more. "But you _lied_."

Six slowly twisted the weapon, drawing it out of the Career, who finally screamed as if he were looking at Death himself.

She brought the end slamming down into the front of his shoulder blade. "_Didn't you_? Didn't you say you weren't a 'real' Career?" Six shook her head, slowly pulling out the weapon. "_Pathetic_."

He'd said he'd never killed. He'd said he was a good person. Oh, they all said _so_ many things.

Six pulled out something else, what looked like the flat edge of a sword, broken off. She pressed it against the boy's arm, leaning on it. His eyes went wide as he realized what she'd done with it. All the electricity originally in the spiked balls had been re-wired, and it was here, now going into him—hot, searing pain like someone had thrown all of his nerves into a fire. His voice broke after fifteen seconds, and he went limp.

He was barely conscious, but Six whispered, "You said you weren't a part of that—" she looked up at the sky, smiled as if she were looking at the Gamemakers, then finished "—_r__ebellion_."

As if on cue, his cannon fired.

Six climbed back, smirking at him in satisfaction.

#=#=#

The day in the Games continued without more consequence. The sun rose higher, more scorching with each hour until the ground seemed to radiate suffocating heat.

The boy from Eight wiped the sweat off his forehead, rolled up his sleeves again, and kept walking. He'd heard all those cannons this morning. _Someone_ had to be alive, and they were there. It had to be one of the Careers, he reasoned. They'd met up with someone who'd gave them a good show, but no one could take _all _the Careers this year. No one.

_Especially not you_, chided a voice in his head.

He threw the long knife in his hand at a tree in frustration, and it took a full three minutes to get it back out. _Idiot. Now look what you've done._

Four cannons. One attacker, and three of the Careers; it had to be. He knew the direction they'd gone, and that was where he was heading. Why drag the Games out? Since the recent… _attempts_, the deaths in the arena had been bloodier and slower than ever. Two of the Games had lasted past the six-week mark.

This wasn't going to be one of those years, certainly.

A breeze swept in from behind him. "Thank Panem," he muttered, and dug out his water bottle, taking another long gulp. There was no point in saving it. By the end of this day, he was certain he'd either be crowned a victor or dead. One or the other. _He was always a sore loser._

But then again, so were the rebels.

He heard the _whish _of air again, and a short, stout blade hit the ground near him. He started, turned, his eyes setting on the boy from Nine. Then he ran, footsteps heavy and pounding, his breaths quickly becoming heaves and gasps. Four times, he almost fell flat on his face. Weapons flew as the boy from Nine chased him, deeper into the almost autumnal woods, crashing through piles of leaves.

_If I just keep running, he'll have to give up. I can outlast him._

His throat hurt, dry and sore from his ragged breathing. His heart pounded, blood roaring in his ears, a deep ache settled in his chest and side. He couldn't feel his legs, didn't know how he was moving, but the woods raced past him, the boy from Nine slowly making progress, closer, closer, his weapons drawing nearer.

One caught him near the ankle, and he fell with an _oof_.

Nine, still running, bent to put a knife in his back, leaped over it, and continued on.

#=#=#

Shortly after the anthem that night, the air was cooler, crisper. But the air, the silence, they rang with last screams and cannon-shots. It felt of death.

Six contentedly set up a fire, wondering how long she had until she'd be driven towards her last bit of competition. She exhaled, turned the rodent-meat on the end of a stick over a few times. She blinked the dust out of her eyes.

She heard a rumbling somewhere in the distance. The land at the edges of the arena all surged upwards and she jumped up, gaping and breathless, as the land came slamming back down, into the rest of the arena. Waves went through the dirt, jerking to one side or the other. She _ran_, tripping down a sloping mountainside.

The land moved from under her, to the left and she was thrown off her feet, landing near the base of a tree trunk that fell, not hitting her but nearly trapping her there as she scrambled to regain her footing, racing down, down, down, into the valley.

A wave of the dirt caught her off-guard, hurling her head-first towards the bottom of an incline. She landed heavily on her side, sure something was broken. "Uh—Ungh—Uhn..."

_Thwack!_ Something collided with a nearby tree. _Whoosh!_ Something sailed through the air, towards her, soon occupying all of her vision as she lifted her head slightly from the dirt, those brown eyes wider than ever in her last moment.

_Boom._

District Nine had themselves a victor.

#=#=#

The sixtieth Games had brought an important lesson to the Capitol. The rebels' fire would never be extinguished, but the Games, they had to move forwards. The President gave his address from the balcony of his mansion, sweeping back inside as the last camera flashes went off, and there were cries of "For Panem!"

Those years before had been a joke, a child's game, compared to what was to come, he promised.

And after that, no one ever truly won the Games again. Not even Katniss Everdeen.

**END**

#=#=#

**Author's Note: **Don't ask me where this came from (some dark part of my mind). I started it quite a while back, and then made some changes so it could exist as a oneshot. Basically: my contemplations on _changes of the Games throughout the years (plus why), and where the rebels were before the Mockingjay_ came along. Reviews are more than welcome.


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